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Rob Neufeld: An attempt to see the whole monument picture

The granite obelisk standing in Pack Square was constructed in memory of Zebulon Baird Vance, a northern Buncombe County native and North Carolina governor, in 1896.

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The Vance Monument, a 65-foot obelisk that has dominated Pack Square for more than a century, memorializes Zebulon Baird Vance, a Buncombe County native and governor of the state during the Civil War. Vance, who served as a U.S. senator and representative, also was a slave owner, complicating his legacy.(Photo: Angela Wilhelm/awilhelm@citizen-times.com)Buy Photo

The Vance Monument debate calls us to communicate as well as possible. We want history to affirm certain things, including truth; and to stand for good qualities. We want to decry oppression. Is it significant that, with the current monument debate, we are focusing on one specific act of oppression, the slave society of the Confederacy?

Am I right in seeing that slavery is not the debate’s key focus? If it were, the Washington Monument would come down. The key focus, it follows logically, is support of the Confederacy, which does lead to the rhetorical question: Had there been nine million bad people living in the South at the time? How do we judge?

There were people just like us living there then. If we empathize with these long-ago folks, we’ll find greed, simplicity, decency, love, hypocrisy, self-delusion, enlightenment, courage, pragmatism and cruelty — in other words, us.

Can we do as Atticus Finch says and climb into another’s skin and walk around in it? Can we get to know Zebulon Vance, this region’s most famous politician, whose death occasioned the monument?

Family slaves had been part of Vance’s childhood, and his view of them had been familial and paternal.

The last will and testament of Vance’s grandfather, Col. David Vance, gave older slaves free liberty to visit their children at Vance’s children’s homes; and required that “the evening” of their lives “slide down as comfortable as may be.”

In adulthood, Zeb Vance knew of the Abolitionist position. What was going on in his mind? What kind of a person does he represent?

One of the sins of slave-owning is objectifying others. Historically, this a tool of exploitation. Southern Appalachians have felt its awful stigma in their contacts with land-grabbers. African-Americans continue to feel it throughout America today.

Likewise, in the current debate, people who connect with Southern heritage are grouped with hate groups who have appropriated their symbols.

Some people point out that the Confederate battle flag is, in its origin, not a broad symbol of Southern heritage. This is true, except that it is has been adopted as such by many for whom the South is many things. A problem arises when hate groups adopt the flag and make it impossible to think that anyone waving it is not aware of its implications.

So let’s put the flag issue aside, and just talk about Southern heritage. It is complex. I have discovered that Northerners, for the most part, need to know more about Southern history and the Civil War, about which I have heard some say, “Why are we still talking about this?”

In discussions about the Washington Monument, I have heard experts give one faulty justification after another.

The one legitimate distinction is that the Confederacy has become a symbol of racism to many, and it’s time to wipe out racism. We hate hate. But there’s a danger to zealotry, even about a great cause. And there’s a danger to alienating Southerners by not even trying to know them, let alone respect them.

I hope that history can show that people with moral right on their side can usher in an era of openness, not divisiveness; of gentleness, not retribution; and of optimism and trust.

This is in the spirit of Vance the reconciler. The people who put up the Vance Monument honored this aspect of him. The music that had preceded the thematic speech had been “Yankee Doodle,” “Tenting on the Old Camp Ground” (an anti-war song), and “Dixie,” as I reported on Aug. 10; not just “Dixie,” as was summarized in the paper on Aug. 16. The distinction is critical.

The national argument seems beyond our control, but we can set an example locally. We can use the monument as a way of understanding history and human nature. We can make it a statement of redemption as well as justice and take the definition of Southern symbols away from the Klan.

I am totally into how we make statements. For instance, if an African-American monument were placed at the lap of the Vance Monument, I fear it would reinforce the parent-child image. Might an African-American monument, instead, stand proud in a place its own, as in Atlanta, where the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site in the Old Fourth Ward functions as a thriving black business district? This would not preclude adding educational material to the Vance Monument site.

Is our goal a diverse, fair and unified society? How does one lay down the line, “No more racism”? Can morality be an alliance and an understanding rather than a holy war?

Once racism is publicly and roundly condemned, how do we then get at root problems, such as income inequality, justice, education, housing, health and jobs? The average median household income for black residents in metropolitan Atlanta is $41,047, compared to $33,632 for the nation and $19,889 for Asheville.

How do we connect our idealism with pragmatism? How do we use the past to free the future? How do we include everyone in our community?